Data Transfer Cartridges (DTC)

The DTC page in a frag order lists every Data Transfer Cartridge available to the mission, lets you inspect what each one contains, and lets editors upload their own cartridges and nudge points around on a map. Cartridges you upload are packaged into the exported .miz, so pilots load them in-cockpit exactly as authored.

This page covers managing whole cartridges. To push your map drawings into a cartridge's geo lines instead, see Drawings in the DTC.

Opening the DTC View

Open the DTC item in the publish navigation. The left pane lists every cartridge; selecting one opens its inspector on the right.

Two kinds of cartridge show up in the list:

• Mission cartridges (gray badge) are embedded in the uploaded .miz by the mission author. They are read-only — you can inspect and download them, but not edit or delete them.
• Uploaded cartridges (blue badge) are ones you added through Frag Orders. These are fully editable.

If a mission cartridge and an uploaded cartridge share the same file name, the uploaded one takes precedence and hides the mission copy.

Inspecting a Cartridge

The inspector splits a cartridge into tabs, and only shows the tabs that actually contain data. Depending on the airframe you may see:

• Comms — radio presets
• Waypoints — nav points, with a mini-map
• Threats — threat points and their rings, with a mini-map
• Geo Lines — lines and shapes drawn on the moving map, with a mini-map
• RWR — radar-warning receiver programming
• Countermeasures — chaff/flare programs
• Raw JSON — the full cartridge, always available

The parsers are airframe-aware, so an F-16 cartridge (MPD / ELINT) and an F/A-18 cartridge (WYPT / SA / ALR-67) are each broken down using the right fields.

Every cartridge — mission or uploaded — can be downloaded as a .dtc file using the download button in the view header.

Uploading Cartridges

Uploading requires the Editor (or Owner) role. DTCs are mission-wide rather than tied to a single flight, so individual group planners cannot upload, edit, or delete them.

To upload:

1. Drag one or more .dtc files anywhere onto the DTC list pane, or click the upload button in the list header.
2. Frag Orders validates each file. A file that isn't valid DTC JSON is rejected with an error.
3. The cartridge is saved and appears at the top of the list with an uploaded badge.

Re-uploading a file with the same name replaces the previous version.

Terrain Must Match

A cartridge is rejected if its terrain doesn't match the frag order's theater. This prevents loading, say, a Syria cartridge into a Caucasus mission where its coordinates would be meaningless.

Editing Points on the Map

The Waypoints, Threats, and Geo Lines tabs each render a mini-map for the cartridge. On an uploaded cartridge, editors can drag points directly:

• Nav points and geo-line vertices can be dragged to a new position.
• Only existing points move — you can't insert a new vertex partway along a line.
• Threat rings and derived route lines are display-only.

Each drag re-serializes the entire cartridge and saves it. The map holds the point at its new position until the save lands, so it won't flicker back. A success or error notification confirms the result.

DTC lines are drawn dotted, matching how they appear on the aircraft's moving map.

Mission cartridges render the same maps but are not draggable.

In the .miz File

When you download a packaged .miz from the Publish page, every uploaded cartridge is written into it under the mission's DTC/ directory, so pilots find them in the in-cockpit DTC menu. Mission-embedded cartridges are left as the author saved them.

As with all packaging, the original .miz you uploaded is never modified — cartridges are only injected into the downloaded copy.

note

Deleting an uploaded cartridge only removes it from Frag Orders and future packaged downloads. It has no effect on cartridges the mission author embedded in the original .miz.